“Mmm. So, I’m a Level 1 Human with an occupation of a Villager… or is that a job? Maybe a title? I don’t know,” I thought, staring intently at my status screen. “Then, what’s this ‘Normal’ status about? Is it like ‘I’m normal’ or ‘I’m different’ kind of thing, or maybe it’s my mood? It’s kinda hard to tell without proper instructions or labelling…”

I looked at the screen for a moment in silence before muttering, “Oh well. At least, I know I’m a Level 1 Human with a Villager. That’s pretty standard for any game. Now, let’s see what I’ve got…”

I turned my attention to the buttons littered around my status screen. By pressing on each of the buttons, a dropdown list appeared and showed me slots that would be filled with something. So far, the dropdown lists for Skills, Items and Friends showed me empty slots.

“Ah… I have no friends… I’m a loner…” I muttered, hanging my head with a hand placed over my forehead in depression for a moment before I sighed and said, “Oh well. With the kind of attention, I was drawing myself earlier, I doubt I’ll ever make friends. Anyway…”

Sighing again, I continued pressing the remainder of buttons to check out what else there were. Pressing the Jobs button made a dropdown list with a single slot filled that read, “Village Lv1.”

“Mmm… My job is a level 1 villager Then…”

I pressed the Titles button and it showed a dropdown list with a single slot filled that read, “Villager.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding in understanding. “This makes sense now. Mmm?”

Just then, I noticed a green checked mark to the right of the only title on the list. I moved my hand and pressed the area where the checked mark was. Instantly, a red exclamation mark appeared on the centre of the label before a window popped up in front of me.

“You cannot deselect your only title. Action denied!”

“Oh,” I said, reacting to the message with surprise before smiling in satisfaction. “Well, that certainly makes sense.”

I felt satisfied by the answer when I became worried about something and thought, “It’s great that I have a job of a villager, but what can I do with it? For that matter, how do I earn money, get food to eat and stay somewhere safe? In fact, how do I do any of that when I can’t communicate with anyone from this world.”

This made me focus my attention on the Abilities button which I left to last. I know that I could’ve opened it earlier on, but I was worried that I might be heavily disappointed to find different abilities to the ones that I picked. After all, just because my stats got carried over didn’t mean my abilities would.

So, feeling very nervous, I raised my hand and pressed on the Abilities button. In an instant, a dropdown list appeared before me and it showed three slots filled with three different names and descriptions.

Runner I

Increases the movement for a short period of time.

Identify I

Focus on a target and you will see information regarding it.

Translator I

Can switch known languages to speak, read, understand and write in different languages.

Momentarily surprised, I soon recovered to grin broadly and clenched my fist in excitement.

“Yes!” I said, triumphantly punching the air with my fist.

I am glad the three abilities I had chosen back in my world are here because one of them is very important right now; the Translator I. It’s the ability that will let me speak, read and understand the different languages that I cannot normally speak. Of course, while I do feel relieved, I somewhat smiled ironically.

I picked the “Runner” ability because it gives me a running boost, I picked the “Identify” ability because I wanted to read information on things like poisons, traps and stuff like that. As for choosing the “Translator” ability, I had a feeling the game might involve different languages, like codes and stuff, so I chose it so I can translate codes and crack encrypted messages to win events.

“Heh. Who would’ve thought it’d come in handy at a time like this,” I muttered wryly. “Mmm?”

A surprised sound came out of my mouth when I suddenly noticed that the Translator ability’s rectangular bar was glowing blue for some reason. Wondering why it was doing that, I pressed it and saw a window popup in front of me with a message and a few options along with a button at the bottom.

“Huh?” I said, narrowing my eyebrows suspiciously while looking at the screen.

The header of the window read, “Translator Options,” and below it was a message that read, “Thank you for using Translator. Your settings have been updated to meet the requirements of stage 1.”

“Stage 1?” I repeated, wondering what the word meant.

I momentarily looked around at the “I” that each of my abilities had next to their names before realising the meaning behind the explanation.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Oh. So stage 1 is like level 1 but with a different levelling system. Makes sense. After all, skills improve and abilities evolve. Something that I always hear my teacher saying in our biology lessons. Anyway…”

Looking down the window before me, I noticed a rectangular bar that had an arrow pointing downward. Beside the rectangular box are two radio buttons that each had a label at the top that read, “Manual” and “Automatic” for some reason. Below them was a disabled button that read, “Save.”

“Okay. I wonder what they do,” I thought, looking curiously at them.

Only one of the two radio buttons were selected, and I moved my hand tentatively to press on the unselected one. In an instant, a red cross appeared with a beep-beep sound followed by a popup message that read, “Cannot currently change settings because the stage level is too low.”

“Heh?!” I said reflexively, widening my eyes in surprise. Glancing at the labels one more time, I finally figures out their meaning and thought, “I see. So, these are the settings that set to either have the new language auto-translated or have me manually change the language. This explain why the translator failed to do its job earlier because the stage level is so low. What a bummer…!”

Sighing in resignation, I turned away and focused my attention on the rectangle box with the downward arrow beside it. As I was about to clock on it, I momentarily froze when I read what the words at the centre of the rectangle bar which read, “Ancient.”

Raising an eyebrow sceptically, I asked, “Ancient? What’s ancient?” It took me mere seconds to realise what it means, and I muttered in a quiet voice, “My current language is Ancient? So, like, the language that these people speak in is modern? Wow…”

The language from my world is the globally spoken in almost every country. Sure, there are countries that still honour their traditions of speaking in their mother tongue, but most people learn to speak in the mainstream language. It’s the one that’s spoken mainly in my country anyway, so I never knew or bothered to learn about the other languages.

“Still, to think my language is ancient… It’s really funny,” I said, chuckling to myself before saying, “Right. This better work…”

I pressed the downward arrow and it created a dropdown list with another option that read, “Bazara.”

“What a strange name?” I muttered, eyeing the word with a look of amusement on my face. “Well, Bazara language it is.”

Selecting on the new language, the dropdown list vanished, and I immediately pressed the save button. A moment later, a window popped up that read, “Saved successfully!”

“O-kay!” I said bracingly, sighing in nervousness. “Time to test this out.”

I grunted as I rose to my feet and walked out of the alleyway in hopes of finding someone nearby to test it on. Of course, I’m well aware that there might be people still giving me strange looks, but I hope the few minutes of my absence has made them less wary of me. Anyway, so I walked out and looked left to right before wondering which way to turn.

At that moment, I heard a rush of footsteps that made me dive back into the alleyway in sudden fright. I stood against the wall and stayed silent as people seemed to be running in a certain direction with an air of urgency surrounding them.

“We’d better hurry! Markus is holding his wife hostage!”

“I know! That man’s a lunatic!”

“Come on! Let’s quickly go there!”

I heard several of them speak similar words to the others and the first reaction I had was to want to punch the air triumphantly.

“Yes! It worked! I can finally understand!” I thought, grinning happily before my expression changed to that of seriousness as I thought, “Still, those are some pretty dark words to say. Mmm. I better follow them and see what’s happening.”

So, waiting for a moment, I quickly dived in to the crowd rushing towards a direction and followed them on a jog. I was led all the way back to where I first started before going past that point to arrive at, what seemed like, a tavern.

“Wow!” I uttered, amazed at the number of the people in front of me.

A large crowd of people had gathered in front of me and they seemed to be encircling someone holding someone else as a hostage. I suddenly came to a stop and surprised the people behind me, making them serve out of the way like a tennis ball. Okay, maybe I am being too literal, but the way they avoided me while continuing to run was amazing to notice.

“Watch out, kid!”

“Get out of the way, brat!”

“Out of the way!”

These were the kinds of shouts the people were barking at me, but I didn’t particularly care. I merely moved forward and tried to look over their shoulders to see a figure of man holding a slim bodied woman with a fat stomach.

“Hold on…! She’s actually pregnant!” I thought, clarifying my mistake after noticing the amount of stress, perspiration and tired the woman looked.

The man was armed with, what appeared to be, a small knife the size of a kitchen knife and held it close to her throat. He seemed to be pinning her arms behind her with his other arm while shouting vulgar insults at people and demanding, what seemed to be, a lot of money.

“Hey! Stop blabbing and get me my money!” the man, named Markus, shouted with a glare.

“Calm down, Markus! Don’t hurt her!”

“Listen to reason!”

“We’ll give you the money, so please be patient and relax your grip on her.”

The people, despite being armed with swords, chose to try and settle this matter with words to not bring any harm to the woman. I’ve seen evidence that they were trying their hardest to calm the man down by speaking smoothly to him, but the man suddenly became aggressive and pressed the knife tightly against her throat.

“Shut up and get me my money!” he bellowed, spitting exiting out of his mouth with each shout.

A trickle of blood slowly came crawling down the side of the woman’s neck where he penetrated the layer of her skin with the knife. Instantly, the crowd were aghast upon seeing this and they immediately backed away with the protesters crying out to stop him.

“We’ll get the money! We’ll get the money, so please don’t hurt her!”

I watched the man make a twisted grin on his face and clenched my fists in anger. Looking closing at the woman, you’d think that she is probably nearing the final stages of her labour. If that’s the case, then this moron is certainly causing her and his unborn child great trouble with the amount of stress she is feeling from this.

“Bastard…” I muttered, sighing in resignation while shrugging my shoulders. “Oh well. It’s too dangerous, so I’ll just stick here and be safe?”

I nodded in agreement, but my head started making other plans as I thought, “Wait a minute. He’s holding a knife. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea how strong or weak I am in comparison to my level 1 status. Maybe, if I use my Runner ability to rush at him and snatch the knife away, maybe I could stand a chance against him.”

Just then, as I was staring at the man, a window popped up showing me information about him.

Name:

Markus Viridin

Race:

Human

Title:

Adventurer

“Man… I wish I was able to see his level and stats…” I muttered, momentarily dropping my eyes in dismay before focusing on the Title and muttering, “Still, an Adventurer…”

“If he has that title, then I’d have to assume he’s got good level and stats. The risk just increased, but I feel I can do it with the element of surprise on my side. After all, the last thing this idiot is going to expect is to see someone rushing towards him at high speed. The risk is great, but I’m confident it’ll pay off.”

With a firm decision made, I silently nodded to myself reassuringly and stared at the man before making my move.